Pushing The Door Open

By not writing a Henry II, Shakespeare left the door open for others. Christopher Fry in Curtmantle, now at the Aldwych Theatre, and T. S. Eliot in his Murder in the Cathedral, slipped through while the door was ajar instead of breaking it down. A pity, too, that Mr. Fry, a fine poetic playwright, can only discover inspiration in the costumed era of Kings, Bishops and Chancellors. A conflict of Church and State, of public and private morality, of theology and atheism, of conscience and a lack of it, is even more appropriate today than yesterday. I hope Mr. Fry will not scour the kitchen sink, but is there no in-between? The play itself is a delight to the car and the eye, engaging the attention without challenging heart or mind. Nevertheless it is better than most things on in London today.
0,11.
SOMEWHERE. well hidden from the public eve, there must be a mysterious factory where employees are sworn to secrecy about the nature of their work. Even wives are, no doubt, excluded from the knowledge of just what the menfolk are doing. But regularly as clockwork (or should one say "countdown" nowadays?) sealed vans leave the works with bates of chiffon scarves. crates of playing cards, animated rabbits, saws (special type for sawing ladies in half), eggs, wands, bottles, and in fact all the paraphernalia dear to the world's magicians.
Good customers of my (probably) fictitious factory are the members of the Magic Circle who are this week putting on the cream of their talent at the Scala Theatre, London. Special credits in a wealth of talent go to Jerry Darnelte for his skill with a whole barful of bottles; the pseudo-psychic phenomena of "The Man in White", and the magic-revue of Kalanag. Ventriloquist Ray Alan has an uncannily good line but should
improve his patter. M,C.
431RAEME CAMPBELL'S Es cape from Eden (Lyric, Hammersmith) has none of Muriel Spark's sardonic wit about it. The laughter it provokes is the wrong kind, mocking at lines which were apparently meant to win sympathy. The actors (especially Geoffrey Tettow) battle gallantly with a hopelessly mixed-up script, but the hoots of the audience kill anything that might be worth listening to. Tin whole theme, in any case, has been played to death in club theatres. Perhaps now it
could be buried. T. McQ.
DETER HALL and the Royal Shakespeare Company have worked wonders with a three-hour long production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida at the Aldwych Theatre (Oct. 25-27 and Nov. 5-8). but the snarling, cynical, cruel undertones of the writing remained a bit much for my taste. and the Trojan War as the backcloth to it all didn't improve things. It was hard not to yawn at some of the speeches which were dragged in towards the end after the earlier lewd banter of Max Adrian's Pandaros,
T.McQ.